Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (1930– ) is an American printmaker, painter, and sculptor who works in the styles of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Neo-Dada. He is most well known for his various depictions of the American flag that combine painting, collage, and abstraction with figural representation.
He briefly studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948 before moving to New York City to study at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. From 1952 to 1953, he enlisted to fight in the Korean War and was stationed in Sendai, Japan. He returned to New York the following year and met artist Robert Rauschenberg, who became his lover. At this time, Johns was heavily influenced by choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage, and together they worked to develop new ideas about the contemporary art scene.
Johns had his first solo show after gallery owner Leo Castelli saw his work during a studio visit with Rauschenberg. Castelli became enamoured with Johns’ renditions of the American flag in different colours, shapes, designs, and media. During the exhibition, four works were purchased by Alfred Barr, the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Johns began creating his paintings of maps, flags, numbers, targets, etc. in 1954 and quickly became known for these works of art. He created these works by combining collage, abstraction, and figurative design into an image that could be read as both a representation of a specific object/subject or as an abstract pattern. However, he did not paint in a truly Abstract Expressionist style due to his consistent use of recognizable symbols, such as numbers. He often painted using the encaustic technique (using heated wax as paint) to create surface texture alongside plaster reliefs. This combined the two-dimensionality of painting with the three-dimensionality of sculpture. Throughout his career, Johns made over forty different paintings of the American flag.
His practice as a printmaker also added to his paintings because he would sometimes use his intaglio prints in the collaged parts of his artworks. Since 1960, Johns had been working with the Universal Limited Art Edition, Inc. to make his prints, and in 1973 he was the first person there to use the handed offset lithographic press. Johns’ sculptures are made through an amalgamation of wax casting and collage techniques. After sculpting a figure in wax, he would layer the surface with various materials (keys, newspaper imprints, etc.) to add surface texture before casting the form in bronze.
Johns has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Vincent van Volkmer Prize in 1960 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom on February 15, 2011 (making him the first painter or sculptor to receive the Medal since Alexander Calder in 1977). In 1963, Johns and Cage established what is now called the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City. Johns’ work has been collected by many major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Johns continues to live and work in Sharon, Connecticut, and the island of Saint Martin.